Honda develops new tech to join steel and aluminium

Seems that the all-new Acura RLX features more new tech than just the Acura Precision All-Wheel Steer, Jewel Eye LED headlamps and the AcuraLink cloud-connected ICE system mentioned in the gallery post earlier in the week.

The car also features the first application of a new technology developed by Honda, one that marries steel and aluminium in a far easier and better manner, and the result can be found on the RLX’s door. In this case, Honda has come up with a new aluminium outer door panel – which has conventionally been made of steel – and joined it to a steel inner door panel.

Anyone with a basic understanding of metallurgy will understand how pairing such dissimilar metals can be a bit of an arduous process. Here, in order to join the steel and aluminium, the company has incorporated several different technologies, including those to prevent corrosion (electrical corrosion) and thermal deformation caused by the different expansion rates of steel and aluminium.

Core tech that has enabled adoption of aluminium for the outer door panel includes a ‘3D Lock Seam’ (3DLS) structure, where the steel panel and aluminium panel are layered and hemmed together twice.

Also on, highly anti-corrosive steel for the inner panel, and a new form that assures the complete filling of the gap with adhesive agent. As for the adhesive, that’s new too, and the composition has a low elastic modulus (translating to a better ability to ‘stretch’), allowing it to work well with the 3D Lock Seam.

The new technologies eliminate the spot welding process required to join conventional steel door panels, and also translate into weight savings – the RLX’s door panel is 17% lighter than it would be if it were a conventional all-steel structure.

In addition, the weight reduction at the outer side of the vehicle body concentrates the point of gravity further toward the centre of the vehicle, contributing to improved stability in vehicle manoeuvring. Honda of course has plans to expand the newfound application to other models.

Anthony Lim believes that nothing is better than a good smoke and a car with character, with good handling aspects being top of the prize heap. Having spent more than a decade and a half with an English tabloid daily never being able to grasp the meaning of brevity or being succinct, he wags his tail furiously at the idea of waffling - in greater detail - about cars and all their intrinsic peculiarities here.

So basically the same process as making a Katana sword….taking two metals, fold it and heat and compress multiple time until both metals compresses together forming a dense metal , and repeat it until the maker is satisfied……correct?

Hahah… No AVH is not like katana sword making. That one increases the strength of the material, in the Honda case, their aim is to assemble 2 different material into 1 unit.

Like the door frame you see up there. The bone inner is steel, the outer skin is aluminium. Since aluminium cannot be welded to steel (weld wil not be strong enough), they have came up with the alternative method, which is glueing the both piece at the end, and fold the end. (But of course they can use screws to hold it together but weight will increase and it’ll be ugly)

Glue is just to make it stick together, the gem is the fold, whereby it creates a hook joint that makes both pieces hook together. It is of course by no means, easy. It looks easy but there are other issues to it, hopefully Honda covered all of them.

Katana sword process involved additional heat element while this 3D lock seam method don’t. basically what Name called it is correct. You will get clear picture if you zoom in the door frame picture. Conventional is fold and spot weld in layman terms.

Good thought. however, current level of nanotech is still immature. we mostly use it for coating stuff. there’s still a lot that we don’t understand and what’s more to be implemented in automotive industry. But everybody’s heading that direction. It’s just a matter of who gets there first.

In automotive, we actually do use nano tech on research level (called tribology) for developing nano-lubricant also find low weight material with low wear mast rate and hi friction resistant so engine could be resized smaller

This is not a new technology; people know for ages of the difficulties to ‘stick’ two different type of material. Steel is a ferrous material, whilst aluminium is non-ferrous. It is impossible to weld/joint together by conventional welding due to different molecular structure. It is like adding gravel into sand and hoping it will dissolve together. No it can’t. I can see that they improve the bonding by ‘clipping’ at the other end

My friend’s Wira outer door panel was replaced with acrylic (by himself) after an accident. Don’t know how he did it. But effect was cool. A transparent cover, ding-proof and rust proof (a thing that P1 Wira always has).
Best thing was you can see how all the mechanism inside works (or not work for the power windows).

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